No, it wasn’t the Boy Wonder standing in the Produce section of my local grocery store, but ‘holy guacamole’, I couldn’t help but marvel in witnessing the earnest conversation between a young gentlemen and the produce clerk restocking bins.“Excuse me, where could I find the raw guacamole?”
A bit perplexed but not wanting to be rude, it was all the clerk could do to respond, “Raw?”“Yeah…I’m going to a party on Sunday so I’m making the guacamole. It’s my first time. Can you help me?”
What do I say in the face of so much apparently lacking in his young life up until that point? Oddly enough, his simple and oh so linear logic wasn’t as off-base as one might think. Why wouldn’t a novice go into the exercise looking for the raw? What chocolate chip cookie doesn’t have eggs and flour as core ingredients in the larger result?
By the time I’d returned to the parking lot, my thoughts had inexplicably turned to the Taoist view of the Universe…how everything (and everyone) is interconnected to everything else. Ancients and native Americans knew it as well as Wayne Dyer ever did. But wait, there’s more.
Like the coins in the change jar sitting on my nightstand, I submit to you there is a flip-side to being universally connected, namely the realization that each of us comes factory-equipped with everything we’re ever going to need to navigate this life. Sure, we’re not born reading or speaking in complete sentences. We learn to do those things, but the capability; the capacity to do so? Those mechanisms are ‘standard equipment’ each of us has the moment we enter this life wet and screaming.
Our young shopper knew what he wanted. He knew what he desired and to his credit, he made the effort of going to the store and asking questions. For doing so, he learned it wasn’t guacamole he needed – raw or otherwise. What he really needed was the avocado.
Good guac comes from having a few ripe avocados, a little salt and a splash of lemon or lime juice. Voila, I’m done and ready for dipping. Sure, you can always build upon the base product with all kinds of ingredients, but at the end of the day, it tastes great, doesn’t take much time and answers our need.
Haven’t all of us gotten ahead of ourselves at one time or another in asking for the guacamole first?
My experience has been the really good things are usually not all that complicated. In fact, they have a magical way of somehow working together for good when we take the time to wade through the problem and stumble onto the right questions.
Whether we pray, meditate or ask someone in Produce, I am reminded as I enter the new week that all of us are plugged in to the larger whole. Tao or Dao, none of us are truly alone. Each of us can invoke the Cosmos anytime we choose. Amazing what you can do when you take the time to frame your answer in the form of a better question.
I have so much still to learn, but there is Grace in all of it. So grab some chips this week and start dipping with gusto.
Holy guacamole? Indeed.

“Dennis Edwards, a former lead singer of Motown pioneers the Temptations, died Thursday at the age of 74. He was a member of the revered soul group originally from 1968 until 1977 and later rejoined for various reunions into the Eighties. His voice was present on a string of hits, including “I Can’t Get Next to You,” “Ball of Confusion” and “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone.” His family confirmed the singer’s death to CBS News.
Edwards’ wife Brenda said the singer, who was living in Missouri, died at a Chicago hospital of complications from meningitis, she told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He was diagnosed with the disease in May 2017.
“It really saddens me to know that another Motown soldier is gone. Rest in peace, my brother. You were a great talent,” Smokey Robinson tells Rolling Stone…
…The singer was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the Temptations in 1989. In 2013, Edwards also received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy, given to the Temptations.
The New York Times reports that Edwards was once married to one of the Pointer Sisters, Ruth Pointer, but that the marriage ended in divorce. His survivors include his wife, Brenda, five daughters, a son and grandchildren.”

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